Disclaimer: Not mine.
Chapter One: Confrontation
Though she had yet to turn eighteen, Rogue was intimate with death. In some ways, death was her life.
The wind had shifted just right, and she could smell the sweet scent of honeysuckle on the night breeze. It should have been a pleasure, but Rogue ignored it. Leaves rustled in the trees above her head, and somewhere off to the north, on one of the typically tidy suburban streets that lined Bayville Park, a woman shouted at her dog to stop barking.
Rogue wondered what the dog was barking at.
In any other town it might have been something no more threatening than a neighbor kid on his bike. In Bayville, the thing that had set the dog off might well be some evil mutant villain that had crept from the darkness out into the glow of the streetlamps.
If so, it would be Rogue's responsibility to find it and handle the situation. She's a mutant, and a member of the team of heroes known as the X-Men. Despite being outcasts from the body of human society, they've chosen to embrace the dream of their mentor, Charles Xavier. Fighting for peaceful coexistance between humans and mutants, protecting humanity against evil mutants who seek to harm them. All very heroic.
Bayville seemed to be a magnet for evil mutated horrors, things the rational human mind tried to insist didn't exist. But, oh, they did exist.
Evil. Villains. Rogue spent far too much time with them, fight after fight, hours of training to defeat the most dangerous enemies - Magneto, Mystique, Apocalypse. She was a bit deadly herself, actually. If touched long enough, her skin was capable of draining someone's lifeforce, their memories, their energy. Could land them in a coma, or worse.
Poison skin.
Rogue was, too her own mind, far too intimate with death. But in some ways, it was her life.
She crouched in the darkness among the trees that lined the western fence of Bayville Park and listened. Not for barking dogs, blaring car radios, or the wind in the trees. Rogue listened for the sounds that would reveal the presence of an enemy.
Lately things had been considerably worse than usual. More humans being slaughtered, more attacks on innocent victims. What had Magneto called it? A War on Humanity? More and more young mutants were being swayed to Magneto's system of belief, becoming killers as soon their mutant abilities surfaced. The X-Men tried to have a few members of the team scout the city each night to prevent potential crimes, but lately patrolling hadn't been enough. In the last week, six people had been slaughtered in the park.
The bodies had been savaged more brutally than the team was used to seeing. There was an abnormal amount of anger in these killings, and so far the X-Men and Xavier were unable to determine who was behind it.
Now, Rogue sat and waited. Logan had told her that she should be able to sense when danger was near. It might be her imagination, but she was certain she did sense something. Evil. Bloodlust. Whatever it was she felt out there, she couldn't focus on it, couldn't narrow it down. She had been in the park nearly two hours and hadn't seen anything more than a few guys she recognized from school drinking too much warm beer.
She was getting anxious. Angry with herself. While she was just sitting there, the mutant could be killing again. Waiting just wasn't good enough. She should be out looking for it, hunting it the way it was hunting human prey.
The waiting was driving her a little crazy.
She promised herself she'd give it to the count of one hundred.
At seventy-nine, she heard a scream.
" 'Bout time," Rogue snarled, and sprinted across the park in the direction of the scream.
She vaulted a park bench, trampled a patch of yellow flowers she couldn't name if her biology grade depended upon it, and angled toward a copseof trees next to the duck pond at the center of the park.
Another scream shredded the night air; a male voice, terrified beyond any concern for masculinity. The scream of someone being murdered.
Branched whipped past her face. Rogue dodged around the wide trunk of an ancient oak. Then it was there, in front of her, claws splattered with blood from the throat of a homeless man whose eyes were already glazed over with death. The corpse was sprawled on the ground in the midst of a clearing. The mutant, resembling more a monster than a person, was crouched over it, not yet aware of Rogue's presence.
She thought of Dr. McCoy back at the Institute. The extreme change his body had gone through when his mutation kicked in. Thank god Xavier had found him before someone like Magneto came along to warp Beast's beliefs.
Before he had evolved, this mutant had been a boy, not more than twelve or thirteen years old. Rogue thought she recognized him, in fact. Maybe she'd seen him, walking to school.
For once, Rogue had nothing to say.
It turned on her, wide yellow eyes blazing bright in the darkness. Sharp, bloody teeth flashed in the dim moonlight that streamed throught the trees. Then it was rushing at her, fingers curled into talons. Rogue slipped the glove off her right hand.
"Come on, then, kiddo," she whispered. "Mama's callin' ya. Time ta go home."
Though Rogue had never asked to be a mutant, nor wanted to be, she had found herself quite adept at being an X-Men. Once upon a time, the idea that she might have some kind of talent for violence, for murder, would have horrified her. But that was before she knew that there were mutants in the world who could only be dealt with by death.
It was a concept Rogue had had a great deal of difficulty dealing with. The stress of the 'heroics' the X-Men faced every day was hard for the team to deal with, and there used to be constant fighting in the mansion. For a while Rogue left town. She just couldn't take it anymore.
But she was back now, and back to stay, and while she was closer than ever with Kitty and Kurt, she and the rest of her teammates would just have to deal with the awkwardness between them.
They avoided the subject whenever possible. Purely to avoid having to talk to everyone about where she was going, why she insisted on going alone, Rogue started to sneak in and out of her window a lot of the time. It was just easier that way.
Up the tree, then through the open window. The climb only got easier every time she did it.
Rogue slipped into the darkened bedroom she shared with Kitty, who was staying at her parents' house that weekend. Logan was sitting there on the edge of her bed, obviously angry.
"Rogue," Logan said.
"Hey, Logan," Rogue said, trying not to meet his gaze. "What's up?"
"Y'know, all Storm asked was that you show," he said quietly. "She didn't tell you what to wear, she didn't ask if you might bring a date with pierced eyelids and tattoos. She just wanted you to come."
Once again, Ah fail Friendship 101, Rogue thought sadly. She looked down and wished she hadn't. On the edge of the bed was a flyer for the benefit at a local art gallery. SAVE THE LOST, it said in bold letters. Beneath that, it read:
It these troubled times, so many of our young people don't know where to turn. Too many of them turn to the streets.
Join us for a special showing of a private collection of paintings by Mary Cassatt, followed by a silent auction of a few select works to raise operating funds for the Bayville Runaway Project.
Rogue swallowed hard. She knew all about running away.
Logan gazed levelly at her. "A lot of people came tonight. They made a lot of money for the project. The rest of the team came, asked where you were. Ororo was really hurt. Rogue, I know you think someone should have been patrolling tonight, but you promised you would be there."
Rogue looked down at her hands.
"Logan," she said again. But there was nothing more to say. Nothing more she could say.
"Just go to sleep," Logan said gruffly, and turned to go to the door.
Defeated, Rogue sat down on her bed, hating her life.
"Sometimes I just wish..." Logan started as he stood in the open doorway, and the hair stood up on the back of Rogue's neck.
He wished what? That Rogue had never come back?
Logan walked into the hall, then stopped, half-turned, but did not turn. Almost as if he couldn't quite look at Rogue again.
"A couple came to talk to the representatives from the runaway project," he said softly. "Their son has been missing for weeks. Name's Timmy. He's in eighth grade. They're frantic. Do you have any idea what it's like to wonder, night after night, where someone you care about is?"
Tears rolled down Rogue's cheeks.
Timmy. Timmy Stagnatowski. Now she remembered that face. She had seen the flyers at the grocery store: Missing. Please help us find him.
Rogue knew exactly where he was. Or rather, where he last had been: earlier tonight, she had drained the life out of him.
Logan reached behind himself and closed the door to her room.
It was a long time before Rogue managed to get up to turn out the light. She undressed, then crawled beneath the sheets.
It was after two in the morning before she finally drifted off to sleep.